A conversation with The Fetch

Kate Kendall is a  digital marketer, communications manager & community specialist. She is also the Founder and Creator of The Fetch, a what’s on guide for Melbourne’s business, digital and creative communities. As a part-time member of Hub Melbourne (Kate likes to travel when not surveying her Melbourne digs), we caught-up with Kate to chat about creative communication, inter-state expansion, and the attraction of fetching!

Hi Kate. How are you?

Good thanks!

What compelled you to start The Fetch?

I’ve been rather active in the Melbourne digital community for a few years and always found it hard to keep track of what was going on. I was forever polluting my browser with numerous tabs of the various meet-ups, events and other happenings around town; trying to keep abreast of it all. I’m used to bringing people together in my offline organisation for events such as Social Media Melbourne and Melbourne Silicon Beach Drinks but I wanted to see if I could do it online as well. The Fetch is a guide to Melbourne’s digital, creative and business communities – it’s a helpful fortnightly email that lists everything that’s on.

Is fetching a passion for you?

I like that the verb ‘fetching’ is taking on! I love content and worked as a magazine and online editor for a few years. It was there that I learnt more about how to understand the zeitgeist – i.e. what people want to read or hear about. Fetching to me is all about content curation, and yes it’s an area I’m passionate about.

It seems like The Fetch is an electronic repository for great ideas in business, creative and digital communities. Or perhaps even a centralised conduit between reader & poster. Is this form of communication growing?

I think it’s a natural progression of communication. Social media has facilitated continuous, effective bursts of contact that is much less disruptive than traditional media. We also have the ability to find out more about each other without even asking, so connecting with like-minded folk is easier. The Fetch is almost akin to a modern-day bulletin board that is interactive, targeted and constantly evolving. People can share messages within the community by tagging their content #fetchmelb on the social web. Alongside the events, we also cover news, articles, jobs, people, places, spaces, causes and more so it’s also like an electronic repository as you mentioned.

At Hub Melbourne we are always interested in learning about different types of sustainable enterprises. What type of model have you adopted to ensure The Fetch is financially sustainable?

The Fetch is a lean and agile project, which means I get to take each month as I feel like it! I’m currently in beta mode so have been focused on getting a MVP (minimal viable product) up and user growth. Therefore I’ve not been as attached to a particular type of business model. There are many predominantly-email titles in Australia and worldwide though, which flourish through sponsorship, advertising (classifieds, display and search), affiliates, commissions, deals, data, lead gen, subscriptions and more. But as of the next fetch sent this Monday, I’m pleased to say The Fetch will be “bootstrapped, profitable and proud” – as the 37Signals guys say. I’d recommend reading Business Model Generation if you haven’t already.

Interestingly you have to subscribe before you can view The Fetch? Why did you choose this model?

This hasn’t been intentional but has worked well so far. When I launched initially, I was going to follow up the subscription-based email with a big ultra-packed website. While I’m sure it would have been helpful and informative, I feel people’s attention spans online are so limited that having the simple email as is works well. After all, content is how you package it. Most people could spend hours finding the items featured in The Fetch themselves, but they aren’t looking for everything – they only want what they need to know. Plus only weird people like me, love spending time trawling and organising our local web’s content that much! I am, however, getting a blog where we can link to and host our interviews and features on. Next week we’re got an interview with the director of digital at The Onion!

What next for The Fetch?

On a smaller scale, we’re going to launch in Sydney in the next few months. I’m off to visit various innovation and startup cities around the world as of next week too, and am looking at how I can construct city guides for the community. Our world is becoming much more accessible, our networks have opened and expanded. People are travelling more and looking for business-related information about cities.

Eventually though, I would love The Fetch to become a fully-scalable technology platform, harbouring the tools for other content curators to share and seed information.

To join The Fetch visit – www.thefetch.org